Health Care: Free, Forced, and Fined

A new poll from NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Harvard School of Public Health finds that a whopping 59 percent of Americans support punishing people for choosing to not get health insurance.

When asked whether they would support a broad proposal that would require everyone to get coverage, 59 percent said they would support it. Such a proposal would require employers to provide coverage or pay into a pool. The government would help low-income people get coverage, and insurance companies would be required to take anyone who applies. People who don’t get coverage through one of these channels or purchase it themselves would pay a fine.

I can understand the desire to help get everyone covered.Â It seems to be a good goal (although I generally disagree with the methods proposed), but this is going way to far – and pretty quickly too.

Now we’re seeing a shift.Â It’s no longer – “let’s help everyone get health insurance” Instead it’s become – “Get health insurance, even if you don’t want to, or we’ll fine you.”

And guess what happens if you don’t pay your fines?

Right.Â Jailtime.

I don’t have health insurance, and at this point, I don’t want any.Â I choose to self diagnose and care, and do pretty well with that too.

Ask yourself this:

Should I go to jail for making this choice?

Should I go to prison, because I don’t want to hand my money over to some corporation that “provides”me something that I don’t want?

What next?

Should I be forced to buy a certain car, or some other product or service that the politicians have determined that this disobedient subject must have?Â Seems to me like that’s nothing more than good old fashioned cronyism – forcing us to give even more of our hard-earned incomes to the corporations that the politicians prefer.

Give it time. I’m sure more such tyranny is coming – all with the cloak of legitimacy that “broad support” gives it.

By the way – where, exactly, in the Constitution, is the federal government given the power to do any of this?